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Commit with AI Messages

Pressing c in the git panel triggers a commit workflow that uses your selected AI model to generate a conventional commit message from the staged diff. The message appears in an editable text area in the viewer pane, where you can review it, modify it, and confirm the commit – all without leaving the git panel.

The Commit Flow

When you press c, the following sequence runs:

  1. Stage – All files marked as staged in the UI are staged in the git index.
  2. Diff – AZUREAL captures the staged diff (git diff --staged).
  3. Generate – A background thread spawns to send the diff to the selected AI model with instructions to produce a conventional commit message.
  4. Display – The generated message fills an editable text area in the viewer pane.

Steps 1-3 happen automatically. You interact starting at step 4.

AI Backend Selection

The backend used for message generation depends on your currently selected model:

Model PatternBackendCommand
gpt-*Codexcodex exec --ephemeral
All othersClaudeclaude -p

The --no-session-persistence flag is passed to Claude to prevent the creation of .jsonl session files for these ephemeral generation requests.

Cross-Backend Fallback

If the primary backend fails (network error, timeout, API issue), AZUREAL automatically retries with the alternate backend. A Claude failure retries with Codex; a Codex failure retries with Claude. This fallback is transparent – you see the generated message regardless of which backend produced it.

The Commit Editor

Once the AI generates a message, the viewer pane transforms into a commit editor:

╔═══════════════════════════════════════╗
║  feat: add retry logic for API calls  ║
║                                       ║
║  Implement exponential backoff with   ║
║  jitter for transient API failures.   ║
║  Maximum of 3 retries before          ║
║  propagating the error to the caller. ║
╚═══════════════════════════════════════╝

The editor supports full text editing with word-wrap. You can rewrite the message entirely, tweak a word, or accept it as-is.

Commit Editor Keybindings

KeyAction
EnterCommit with the current message
Cmd+P / Ctrl+PCommit and push in one action
Shift+EnterInsert a newline (for multi-line messages)
EscCancel the commit

Both Enter and Cmd+P use a deferred pattern: a loading popup renders immediately while the git operation runs in the background. This prevents the UI from appearing frozen during the commit or push.

Message Cleanup

The AI-generated message goes through post-processing before it appears in the editor:

  • Markdown code fences are stripped. Some models wrap their output in triple-backtick fences; these are removed so the message is plain text suitable for a git commit.
  • Leading/trailing whitespace is trimmed.

The result is a clean conventional commit message ready for review.

Conventional Commit Format

The AI is instructed to produce messages following the conventional commit specification:

<type>(<optional scope>): <description>

<optional body>

Common types include feat, fix, refactor, docs, test, chore, and ci. The model infers the appropriate type from the diff content. You can always override the type or any other part of the message in the editor before confirming.